I received an e-mail earlier this week from a Baseball Prospectus reader congratulating me on the early-season success of my value picks from my Fantasy Tier Rankings. While celebrating the success of these players in April is akin to celebrating a new American Pie movie before experiencing the disappointment of actually seeing it (read: premature… see what I did there), it’s still kind of fun. And hey, combined, my value picks have accrued 669 plate appearances—roughly a full season’s worth of at-bats. So today, I’m going to take a (very early) look at which of my picks are panning out and which aren’t.

I’m going to ignore the Four- and Five-Star Value Picks because, well, most of them weren’t really values. Everyone knows that Albert Pujols is a good player, so I’m not going to bother going over him. Instead, I’ll focus on the one-, two-, and three-star guys that you likely acquired on the cheap. These are going to be the moneymakers of a fantasy team, the guys that you’re hoping to make big profits on.

The rest of this article is restricted to Baseball Prospectus Subscribers.

Not a subscriber?

Click here for more information on Baseball Prospectus subscriptions or use the buttons to the right to subscribe and get access to the best baseball content on the web.

As Mariano Rivera leaves his 1,000th appearance behind, see how he stacks up according to Nate's standards.

While looking toward the future with our comprehensive slate of current content, we'd also like to recognize our rich past by drawing upon our extensive online archive of work dating back to 1997. In an effort to highlight the best of what's gone before, we'll be bringing you a weekly blast from BP's past, introducing or re-introducing you to some of the most informative and entertaining authors who have passed through our virtual halls. If you have fond recollections of a BP piece that you'd like to nominate for re-exposure to a wider audience, send us your suggestion.

Before Goose Gossage got into the Hall of Fame and Mariano Rivera reeled off another six superb seasons, Nate turned his statistical eye on the bullpen in the following article, which originally ran as a "Lies, Damned Lies" column on January 6, 2005.

A look at our article aging curve and the most prolific authors of BP's past and present.

Baseball Prospectus rests on a foundation laid in large part by dissecting baseball numbers, but we’ve rarely turned the same inquisitive statistical eye inward. That’s as it should be, since despite our occasional delusions of grandeur, we know that you come here to consume the sausage, not to see it made (the sausage, in this case, being baseball writing). Still, in light of our recent roster additions and ongoing Wayback Machine series, I thought it might be fun to see how far we—and by "we," I mean the site, since I haven’t been around all that long—have come by looking back at our article publication trends and most prolific authors since our online incarnation went live in 1997.

All told, we’ve published 12,500 pieces of writing on the site—a number that will have been eclipsed by the time you read this sentence. The discrepancy between that total and the recent article ID numbers that show up in our URLs can be attributed almost entirely to unpublished drafts. (For those of you hoping for a Great Lost BP Album, forget it—most of them are blank.) At last count, 195 souls have gone far enough wrong somewhere in life to receive their own Baseball Prospectus bylines (most recently Alan M. Nathan, who by all accounts is quite a respectable fellow in other respects).

With the Fall Classic now upon us, the staff at Baseball Prospectus shares their most memorable World Series moments.

Every baseball fan has a special World Series memory, whether it's Willie Mays' catch, Bill Mazeroski's home run, Brooks Robinson's defense, Kirk Gibson's limp around the bases, or Derek Jeter becoming the first-ever Mr. November. With the World Series opening tonight at AT&T Park in San Francisco with the Giants facing the Texas Rangers, many of our writers, editors, and interns share their favorite memories of the Fall Classic.

The favorite Cardinals must chase down the Reds to repeat as NL Central champions, along with news and notes from around the majors.

The Cardinals were considered to have the easiest road to a division title when the season began. PECOTA pegged them to win the National League Central by nine games. Furthermore, the Cardinals were universally picked to repeat as division champions by all the pre-season publications.

As expected, there has been plenty of fallout from last Saturday’s trade deadline. One of the more intriguing developments is the emergence of Jon Jay as the Cardinals new right fielder/number two hitter.

(Under terms of my contract, I’m now obligated to insert a clever remark about how the Cardinals outfielder shares a name with Founding Father and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay. Instead, I’ll just point out that this is clearly a strategy utilized by the Cardinals as they also, at various points in their history, have employed Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Moving on...)

The ESPN executive discusses the changing media landscape, the MLB Network, and a contrarian sense of creation.

ESPN is the epicenter of sports media in the United States, and at the forefront of their award-winning coverage is John Walsh. The media giant's Executive Vice President and Executive Editor, Walsh helps to oversee an ever-expanding array of content, from on-air programming to the journalistic efforts of ESPN.com. A native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Walsh earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, and held editorial positions at Newsday, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, US News and World Report, and Inside Sports before joining ESPN in 1988.

As in the AL, the Central division is as tight as can be, while in the East two Mets are predicted to take home some hardware along with their division flag.

Today we reveal the Baseball Prospectus staff predictions for the division standings and the major player awards (MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year) in the National League, along with the staff picks in some fun miscellaneous categories.

Each staff member's division standings predictions may be found later in the article. Here, we present a wisdom-of-the-crowds summary of the results. In each table you'll find the average rank of each team in their division, plus the results of our pre-season MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year voting.